Canoeing in the Dismal Swamp

THE
DismalSwamp
of Virginia and North Carolina
is one of the celebrated features of the American
continent. Its name is almost as familiar as
Niagara or the Rocky Mountains. Its limits are
not easily defined, no careful survey or good map
of the region having ever been made. It lies in
two States, on the Virginia side in the counties
of Nansemond and Princess Anne, and on the North
Carolina side in the counties of Gates,
Pasquotank, Camden, and Currituck. Almost in the
centre lies Lake Drummond, or "the Lake of
the Dismal Swamp," which is seven miles by
five in extent, according to local records, but
three miles by two and a half by our measurement.
The area of the swamp is between eight hundred and
one thousand square miles. Its reputation is that
of a morass of forbidden and appalling gloom, a
region impenetrable to the search of student or
hunter; the fecund bed of fever and malaria,
infested
withdeadly
serpents and wild beasts; the old-time
refuge of fugitive slaves, who preferred life in
its lonely recesses to the life-in-death of the
slave-quarter and the man-market. It is supposed
by the outer world, and even by those who reside
on its borders, to be a hopeless wilderness, an
incurable ulcer on the earth's surface, a place
that would have been long ago forgotten but for
its shadowy romance,--for its depths were once
enlightened, though it is over fourscore years
ago, by the undying song of a famous poet. Some
of this evil character is true, but most of it is
untrue, and much of the slander has not been
accidental, but deliberate.

It is true that the hunted slave often heard
the baying of the bloodhounds as he crouched in
the cane-brake of the Dismal Swamp, or plunged
into its central lake to break the trail, and true
also that its hundreds of miles of waterlogged
forest is infested with repulsive and deadly
creatures, reptile and beast, bear, panther,
wild-cat and snake; but it is not true that the
Dismal Swamp is an irreclaimable wilderness, the
pestilent source of miasma and malaria.

The Dismal Swamp is an agony of perverted
nature. It is Andromeda, not waiting for the
monster, but already in his grasp, broken and
silent under the
intolerableembrace.

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is the very eye of
material anguish. Its circle of silvery beach is
flooded and hidden, and still the pent-up water,
vainly beseeching an outlet, is raised and driven
in unnatural enmity to the roots of the tall
juniper, cypress, and gum trees, that completely
surround its shore. The waves that should murmur
and break on a strand of incomparable brilliancy,
are pushed beyond their proper limits, and
compelled to soften and sap the productive earth;
to wash bare and white the sinews of the friendly
trees, and inundate a wide region of extraordinary
fertility. The bleached roots of the doomed trees
seem to shudder and shrink from the weltering
death. There is an evident bending upward of the
overtaken roots to escape suffocation. The shores
of the lake are like a scene from the
"Inferno." Matted, twisted, and broken,
the roots, like living things in danger, arch
themselves out of the dark flood, pitifully
striving to hold aloft their noble stems and
branches. The water of the lake, dark almost as
blood, from the surface flow of juniper sap and
other vegetable matter, is forced from six to ten
feet above its natural level, and driven by winds
hither to this bank to-day and thither to-morrow,
washing every vestige of earth from the
helplesslife-givers,
till its whole circumference is a
woful net-work of gnarled trunks and intertwined
fibres, bleached and dry as the bones of a
skeleton, and sheltering no life, but that of the
blue lizard and red-throated moccasin.

These bare roots and blasted stumps circle the
water like a hideous crown, till the lake becomes
a realization of the Medusa. Here, far from the
voices of mankind, the Gorgon stares at heaven,
but sees with introverted eye only the writhing
horror of her own brow; hears only the hiss, and
shrinks from the kiss of her serpent locks, gazing
into no living eyes but those of her own damnable
strands.

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is a victim
waiting for deliverance. Release her, and she is
no longer Medusa; the snake hair will give place
to bands of gold and light; the region
contaminated by her oppression will rejoice and
blossom like a garden.

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is the well of the
swamp's desolation. The swamp is not from itself,
but from the well.

The region of the Dismal Swamp was intended by
nature to be a pleasure ground, a health resort,
and a game preserve for the eastern side of the
continent. In spite of all that has been done
andleft
undone to destroy it, the swamp itself is,
probably, the healthiest spot in America. Its
delicious juniper water prevents malaria more
effectually and perfectly than the famed
eucalyptus of Australia. The flying game of the
continent centres in this region, and the lake in
winter is the best shooting ground in the country.
Now that wealthy clubs and individuals are buying
up the coast shooting, this incomparable natural
preserve ought to be secured for the nation or the
State.

Its original undoing was probably some accident
or cataclysm of nature, changing a water course or
opening a crater-like spring or number of springs.

But the remedy from the first was as easy and
as open to intelligence as the tapping of a vein
to prevent plethora. The lake, it is probable,
was the centre and the cause of the swamp, as is
proved by the streams flowing out of, instead of
into, it. Its overflowing waters, when swelled by
rains or springs, finding no natural channel of
escape, rose foot by foot to the very lip of the
cup, covering the beach and reaching the densely
wooded shore.

In this way has been brought about the singular
condition of the lake, which, instead of being the
lowest, is the highest portion of the
DismalSwamp.
It could be pierced and drained at any point, and
reduced to natural and beautiful proportions Its
overflow, instead of constantly deluging the
surrounding land, could be guided in ten thousand
sparkling channels to enrich and adorn its
wonderful environment.

The Lake of the Dismal Swamp is, by survey,
about twenty-three feet higher than the sea, and
it is not fifteen miles from tide-water, the
intervening land being a level slope, and, except
for the trees, exceedingly easy to channel.

And, stranger still, the channels have been dug
for over one hundred years; but they are locked up
at the outer ends with wooden gates. Ponder on
this marvellous fact: the Lake of the Dismal
Swamp, three miles by two and one half in extent,
and from seven to fifteen feet in depth, is
situated on the side, and almost on the top, of a
hill, beside a tidal river, and yet it creates by
overflow all around it for about one thousand
square miles, one of the densest and darkest
morasses on the surface of the earth.

In 1763, George Washington surveyed the Dismal
Swamp, and discovered that the western side was
much higher than the eastern, and that rivers ran
out of the swamp, and not into it. He then wrote
that the swamp was "neither a plain nor a
hollow, but ahill-side."

A member of the National Geological Survey
recently entered the Dismal Swamp, proceeding
westward from the Dismal Swamp Canal toward the
lake, and found that the rise in the land was five
and one-half feet in seven miles. We met this
gentleman, Mr. Atkinson, within the bounds of the
swamp, and on hearing his statement asked him,
"Could the lake be lowered and the swamp.
drained with such an incline?"

"Certainly," he said. "It is a
very decided water-shed. An opening from the
lake to the tide, on the Elizabeth River on the
one side and the Pasquotank on the other, would
have a fall of twenty-two and six-tenths feet in a
distance of less than fifteen miles."

Why, then, is not the lake tapped and its
superfluous and injurious water drained?

If the Dismal Swamp lie on the side of a hill,
as science proves, and the flow of the water
demonstrates, why does not its superfluous water
run off into the sea?

If the whole extent of the Dismal Swamp, land
and lake together, is from twelve to twenty-five
feet higher than the sea level, while actually
adjoining the sea., why, in the name of reason, is
it not drained and reclaimed?

These are the vital questions relating to
theDismal
Swamp. I shall answer them one by one, and
the answer in each case shall not be an opinion,
but a demonstration.

In the month of May, 1888, two sunburned white
men in cedar canoes turned at right angles from
the broad water of the Dismal Swamp Canal, and
entered the dark and narrow channel, called the
Feeder, that pierces the very heart of the swamp,
and supplies the great canal with water from Lake
Drummond, or the "Lake of the Dismal
Swamp." The men in the canoes were Mr.
Edward A. Moseley and the writer of this article.

These were almost the first canoes, except the
"white canoe" of the poet, that ever
paddled on the breast of the dusky lake since the
disappearance of the Indian hunters a century ago.
The only boats known to the lake are the long,
rude "dugouts," of the negroes, and the
flat-bottomed dories or punts, of the farmers
along the east side of the canal.

While we were in the main canal we found the
banks high, especially on the western side, where
the diggings and dredgings of the channel have
been heaped for a century. On this side, behind
the bank, lay the unbroken leagues of swamp,
crowded with dense timber and canebrake jungle,
the surface of the land or mire being
considerablylower
than the surface of the canal. On the east
side ran the road, and beyond this, long stretches
of level country, formerly part of the Dismal
Swamp, but now more or less cleared, with here and
there a farm of astonishing superiority, and at
long intervals a straggling village, usually
connected with a saw-mill for juniper and
cypress. Originally the canal ran right through
the swamp, which it now borders on the eastern
side.

The land east of the canal has been cleared,
because it has been drained into the sea. The
fall is to the east. But all the land west of the
canal is still unrelieved and "dismal"
swamp.

How is this? Does not the land on the west
side drain into the canal, as the land eastward
has drained into the sea? No! the canal has
completely stopped drainage; it is higher than
all the western swamp.

Then came the startling suggestion, striking us
both at the same time. This canal is a cruel
ligature on the vitals of the swamp, shutting it
in on itself and suffocating it. The canal is
higher than the swamp, and instead of draining it,
drowns it. The canal is a straggler, and here
before our eyes was a deliberate process of land
murder!

But I have outstripped the canoes. Let me
begin at the beginning, and tell this story of
adelightful
summer outing, and stop this
"damnable iteration" of the sufferings
and wrongs of the Dismal Swamp. The swamp cannot
grieve at whatever infamy may be put upon it.
What does it care, or who does care whether the
wonderful lake be ringed with silver sand or
hedged with bleached roots and twisting serpents?
"But the pity of it, Iago! Oh, Iago, the
pity of it!"

Go back again to Norfolk with me, and try to
forget that you have been inside the gates of this
brown-water canal of the Dismal Swamp. It was not
fair to begin my tale in the middle. Surely I
have made a mistake and told the story of the
swamp too soon. But I have only told the story;
it remains for me yet to prove it.

It is seven o'clock in the morning, and we two
are in the market of Norfolk buying bacon, salt
pork, hard bread, cheese, a ham, an alcohol stove,
and all the necessaries for a few weeks' sojourn
in the wilderness.

At eight o'clock, breakfast over, we are
getting into rough suits in the office of Gen.
Groner, of the Merchants' and Miners'
Transportation Company, whose courtesy we shall
remember with pleasure.

At ten o'clock we are on board a tug, kindly
placed at our disposal by Mr. R.B. Cook,
thevirile
manager of the N.Y.,P.&N. Railroad, to
take us to the first lock on the Dismal Swamp
Canal, which runs into the Elizabeth river about
seven miles from Norfolk. Just think of it! the
entrance to the Dismal Swamp only seven miles from
the busiest city in the South, a city that is
destined to become one of the greatest commercial
ports on the continent!

Let me stop here to moralize over this laggard
among the great commercial cities, this voluntary
Cinderella, who was born with the diadem on her
brow, but allowed it to grow tarnished, and at
last to be taken from her head by a less favored
rival. Norfolk has vast advantages over any other
seaport on the Atlantic coast. They are apparent
to every observing stranger; but they have never
been properly estimated or developed by her own.
Norfolk could have led the van of all the Eastern
cities in the race for commercial prosperity; but
she let the breeze go past without unreefing her
sails; and she saw the slower hulls of Baltimore,
Boston, Philadelphia, and New Orleans, pass her
under clouds of canvas and sail clean out of
sight. What What is the matter with Norfolk?
What ails Virginia, that she is not the proud
mother of a greater New York? The possibilities
of Norfolk have always been in full view. Thomas
Jefferson,who
was a student of the favored localities and
resources of the country, and especially of his
own State, declared that Norfolk was destined to
be "the great emporium of the
Chesapeake." Madison agreed with Jefferson,
holding it to be "the true interest of
Virginia to foster the prosperity of Norfolk, as
among the prime objects of her policy." But
Virginia acted like a stepmother, stolidly
spending twenty million dollars to improve
Richmond, to one hundred and ninety thousand
dollars to develop Norfolk.

In later days, Maury said: "Norfolk is in
a position to have commanded the business of the
Atlantic seaboard. It is midway on the coast; it
has a back country of great fertility and
resources; and as to the approaches from the
ocean, there is no harbor, from St. John to the
Rio Grande, which has the same facility of ingress
and egress at all times and in all weathers. * *
* Virginia saw those advantages, and slept on
them."

But she is waking; or at least Norfolk is
waking to her own interests; and with men of
extraordinary intelligence and energy, like Gen.
Groner and Mr. Cook, above mentioned, who are
each building up enormous commercial enterprises,
it is probable that even in our own time, we shall
seethe
radiance of this aroused Southern Cinderella,
as she reaches northward for her borrowed coronet.

But we have kept the tug waiting more than an
hour, and the captain, a manly, weather-tanned
fellow, apologizes for having to keep an
engagement to tow a railroad float across the
harbor, before he starts with us for the lock.

What matter for a few hours' delay here or
there? We have cut our social and orderly bonds,
and we gladly sit and smoke on the tug, while she
pulls and pushes and screams and at last backs the
tremendous float into open water, and buckles to
her heavy tow with the grunting earnestness of
honest toil. We also improve the waiting by
arranging our baggage, oiling gun and rifle,
fixing hooks and lines, and otherwise giving a
last touch to the arrangements.

At one o'clock the tug started with us for the
lock. There was a queer nervousness about us as
we neared the place, caused by our complete
ignorance of what the swamp was like.

"You see that schooner yonder?" said
the captain of the tug, looking across the fields
round which the crooked river winds. "She is
lying at the lock of the canal, loading with
lumber from the swamp."

Presently one of the hands on the tug
pointedto
the water; the river had grown dark like the
stream from a dye-works. "See," he
said, "that is the juniper water of the
Dismal Swamp."

It was singular that neither the captain nor
his men could tell anything about the swamp.
Their knowledge ended at the lock. This is
characteristic of the whole neighboring
population. Richmond knows as little about the
swamp as Boston; even Norfolk and Suffolk know
little more.

"All I know," said the captain,
"is that there are lots of snakes in
there."

"And bears," says another.

"And panthers," says a third, and so
on, and so on, while each one gave a friendly hand
to launch the canoes as we closed to a wharf near
the lock, where about thirty colored men were
loading a schooner with lumber and bundled
shingles of juniper and cypress.

"If I were going in there, I'd keep my
Smith-and-Wesson handy," said the second hand
on the tug, as we touched the shore. Before we
could ask the meaning of the unpleasant hint
(which we found to be a libel on the swamp), the
sturdy little steamer had backed out, and was
whistling "Good-by."

The crowd of colored workmen stopped and stared
at our heap of baggage, and at
thehandsome,
varnished little boats, but soon were recalled to
their work, and we were left to go on packing the
canoes.

The lock-keeper, a gaunt, badly-dressed white
man, sauntered down from his lock to take a look
at the strange boats. He was very obviously
chewing tobacco, and he spoke slowly and nasally.

Before the loading was half done, our first and
almost our last misfortune occurred. Mr.
Moseley's canoe, with timbers warped from a
winter's storage, was leaking like a sieve. Out
must come the packages again--pork, blankets,
camera, ammunition, etc.

"What shall we do now?"

"Hire a mule to tow us, and keep bailing
the canoe till the wood swells and stops the
leak."

"Mr. Lockman," we asked, "can
you let us have a mule?"

"Yes," very slowly, and looking at
the boats, not at us. "I have a mule; but
them boats won't tow."

"But we know better. They will tow. Can
we have the mule?"

"Them boats won't tow," still more
slowly.

"Can we have the mule?" impatiently.

"Not to tow them boats. They won't tow, I
tellye."

Argument and entreaty were in vain. It was
none of his business we held, and we knew better
than he, anyway; but the man was stubborn, though
not at all sullen.

It was getting late in the afternoon, and we
had intended reaching, that evening, the house of
Capt. Wallace, who had a large farm in the swamp,
about twelve or fifteen miles up the canal, and to
whom a friend of Moseley's had written about our
trip.

At last we compromised with the lockman, who
let us have the mule and a cart, with a one-legged
colored driver, to carry our baggage to the
village of Deep Creek, a few miles up the canal.
Then we entered the first lock of the Dismal Swamp
Canal, directly from the tide-water of the
Elizabeth River, and were raised probably eight
feet to the lowest level of the canal. This means
that if this lower lock were opened, the whole
Dismal Swamp could be drained to the depth of
eight feet.

We parted from the unreasonable lockman with no
kindly feelings; but we learned before night that
his intentions had not only been kind, but
exceptionally honest, and his knowledge quite
correct of the towing qualities of an
eighty-poundcanoe.

A word about the history of the canal. A
company for the cutting of the Dismal Swamp Canal
was chartered by the States of Virginia and North
Carolina, in 1787, and both States subscribed
generously to the stock. The United States
Congress also became a large stockholder. The
names of George Washington and Patrick Henry were
among the first subscribers for the stock; though
this canal for commerce must not be confounded
with an earlier system of canals or ditches,
devised by Washington himself for the purpose of
reclaiming the swamp by lightering the timber to
the frontier. These canals still exist; but the
charter of the commercial canal gave it absolute
rights over the waters of the lake and all other
canals in the swamp. It was not opened till 1822,
in which year the first vessel passed through to
Norfolk from the Albemarle Sound. It was
completed in 1828.

The cost of cutting the canal and its
tributaries was about twelve hundred thousand
dollars, and it is estimated that the expense of
the earlier canals, also largely from public
money, was several hundred thousand dollars more.

The Dismal Swamp Canal runs nearly north and
South, joining the Elizabeth River to the
Pasquotank, above Elizabeth City, N. C.,
the distancebetween
those points being about forty miles. The
canal is forty feet wide, chartered to be eight
feet deep, fresh water, the color of dark brandy
or strong breakfast tea (the color caused by the
juniper sap and other vegetable qualities), but
clear and palatable, and singularly wholesome.
The banks, where we could see the cutting under
the foliage, were composed of fine yellow sand
mixed with broken shells. A profusion of
wild-rose bushes, myrtle, sweet bay, flowering
laurel, white blackberry blossoms, and honeysuckle
leaned over the water and made a most lovely
border.

The afternoon was pleasant, with a cool wind in
our favor, and, though Mr. Moseley had bailing
enough to do, we reached Roper's enormous saw-mill
and factory, at Deep Creek, in about an hour. The
yards of the factory swarmed with colored workmen,
and the works covered a large area. There were
immense piles of railroad ties, cypress shingles,
laths, and juniper saw-logs on the side of the
canal, which here widened out like a harbor. The
violent rising scream of the saws sounded
everywhere, something like "p-sh-sh-sh-sh --
hai-ai-AI-AI!"
the last note an ear-splitting
squeal, like a pig in direful pain.

Mr. John L. Roper, the owner of this saw-mill,
leases the timber land of almost the entire
swampto
supply his mill. He keeps in the swamp
probably one hundred men or more, in different
gangs, cutting juniper and cypress, which they
drag by mules over the "gum roads" to
the lake, whence it is lightered through the
Feeder to the Dismal Swamp Canal, and by this
means carried to the saw-mill at Deep Creek. The
colored workers in the juniper groves of the swamp
are its only inhabitants; they are called
"swampers." Let me here explain that
Lake Drummond is the centre of the swamp's
organism, acting precisely like a heart. Except
the Dismal Swamp Canal, which runs along the
border, all the roads, canals, and ditches that
pierce the swamp, radiate from the lake like
spokes from a hub.

The swamp has only one natural feature--the
lake. All the rest is simply swamp. The canals
and roads are accidents.

Whoever would know the Dismal Swamp must study
it from the lake, not from the exterior. This is
the reason that even those living in its
neighborhood know so little about it. Their
knowledge is local, not constitutional.

A "gum road" is a road formed by
trunks of trees about eight feet long, laid close
together, and bearing two rude wooden rails. On
these run low mule wagons or trucks, loaded with
logscut
in the interior. The mule goes securely on
the "gum road," and the negro driver
usually walks ahead on one of the broad rails.

There was no one at Roper's saw-mill who could
give us any information, so we paddled on to the
village of Deep Creek, before reaching which we
passed through another lock. Here the Dismal
Swamp proper may be said to begin. At this lock
we were again raised several feet, so that we were
now, although only a few miles from tidal-water,
probably sixteen feet above the sea level.

"Shall we pay toll here?" we asked
the lockman.

"Not till you come out," he answered,
making it clear that there was only one entrance
and exit on this side of the Dismal Swamp.

"Does the swamp begin here?"

"Yes," said the lockman, leaning at
an angle of forty. degrees, and slowly pushing
the great beam with his back. "It begins
here, and it runs all the way to Florida."

This was true, in a way. The whole southern
coast is margined by swamp lands; but the Dismal
Swamp is not of them. It is high land instead of
low land; its water is fresh, instead of salt or
brackish. Among swamps it is an abnormality. It
leans over the sea, and yet contains its
ownmoisture,
like a bowl. Indeed, the Dismal Swamp
is a great bowl, forty miles long, and ten to
twenty miles wide, and, strange to say, with its
highest water in the centre. The sides of the
bowl are miles of fallen and undecaying trees,
fixed in a mortar of melted leaves and mould.
Deep in the soft bosom of the swamp are countless
millions of feet of precious timber that has lain
there, the immense trunks crossing each other like
tumbled matches, "since the beginning of the
world," as a juniper cutter said.

At the village of Deep Creek, the lockman,
evidently the leading person of the place, was a
handsome and intelligent man, referred to by every
one as "Mr. Geary." A crowd of mingled
white and black awaited our arrival on the canal
bridge; and when we landed,. I was somewhat
surprised to see "Mr. Geary" and Mr.
Moseley shake hands most warmly, and proceed arm
in arm like old friends. A lank white man offered
me an explanation. "Mr. Geary," he
said, "is a high Mason. Them two are above
me and you. I'm an Odd Fellow, I am; but them
fellows are higher'n me or you."

Mr. Geary was a kindly man, "high
Mason" or not. We found later on that he was
widely known as a famous hunter, who probably knew
theDismal
Swamp as well as any man living. He had
shot over it all his life. He told us that the
fishing at the lake was "wonderful."

Moseley's canoe still leaking, we hired a team
from "Mr." Johnson of Deep Creek, to
carry the baggage to Capt. Wallace's house, and
we started to paddle up the canal.

It was a lovely evening, and the surroundings
were so novel and so unexpectedly attractive, that
we can never forget the impression. Far before us
as the eye could reach, ran the canal, narrowing
in perspective, till it closed to a fine point.
On the right, rose from the water, a dense forest
of cypress and juniper, flowering poplar, black
gum, yellow pine, maple, and swamp oak, with a
marvellous underwood of laurel in ravishing
flower, the very air heavy with the rich perfume,
which resembles that of a tuberose, honeysuckle
heaped in delicious blossom, yellow jessamine,
bay, myrtle, purple trumpet flowers of the poison
oak-vine, with the ever-present roses, and
white-flowering blackberry hanging into the water.

As the evening darkened, with a clear sky
overhead, and a red glow from the west, reaching
over the trees, the effect was almost oppressively
beautiful. No other tree darkens in evening
silhouette so impressively as the two queen trees
ofthe
Dismal Swamp, the juniper and cypress. With
the low sun behind them, the clear-cut delicacy
of their foliage reminds one of the exquisite
fineness of dried sea mosses on a tinted page.
But when the sun has gone down, and time sky is
still flushed with its glory, the cypress takes on
a mystery of dark and refined beauty that is all
its own. It rises still blacker than the dark
underwood, the tallest among the trees, lonely,
like a plume. It is not heavy or hearse-like, but
thin, fibrous, the twilight showing through its
delicate branches, and tracing every exquisite
needle of its leafage on the air. It seems to be
blacker than the coming night; blacker far in its
fine filaments than the clustered laurel at its
feet. The darkness and delicacy of the cypress
are its genius. It does not oppress, it thrills.
In the twilight it is the very plume of death,
but of a death uncommon. A yew or a willow is a
sign of mourning; but a cypress in the evening is
a symbol of woe.

But with the decline of the lovely day came
such a jubilant chorus of sweet voices! Never
have we heard, except in the air of dreamland,
such a concert of delicious bird music. In number
and variety the singers were multiplied beyond
conception. Far as we could see along the canal
we knew that the air was vibrant with
thisharmony.

The thought of such unbroken melody following the
eye into the remote distance was a more delightful
music in itself than that which was ravishing the
senses. Here the mocking-bird ceased to mock, and
poured out its own ecstatic soul. The catbird,
discordant no longer, shot its clear joy through
time great harmony, and the wren and swamp canary
twined their notes like threads of gossamer
through the warp and woof of this marvellous
tapestry of sound.

I shall have to speak by and by of the noxious
and horrible denizens of the swamp. Let me dwell
lovingly and gratefully on the pleasure derived
from those that were innocent and delightful.

We let the evening fall on us unresistingly, to
drink in the sweet thing that was around us. We
were miles from our destination, but we could not
settle to mere travelling till this incredible
vesper song was done. We sat silent, absorbed,
witnessing "the deathbed of a day, how
beautiful."

The charm was broken by the happy hailing of
two colored boys on the towpath, who were driving
"Mister" Johnson's team with our
baggage, and who had now overtaken us. Then came
the thorn of our rose. Moseley's canoe was still
leaking, and while he had been floating off with
the divine mocking-bird, the water had gained on
himlike
a temptation. In an instant the concert had
vanished. The curtain of the commonplace fell
over that finer tympanum that almost hears
spiritual voices, and the canoe man was bailing
his boat with a tin dipper, while he grumbled at
fate.

The dusky drivers waited on the towpath, and we
soon started again, keeping up a lively
conversation from boat to wagon. But the leak
grew, the night was closing, and we were in a very
strange land.

"Let us tie a rope to the cart and tow the
boats," we cried, and the picture of riding
indolently up the canal was like a charm.

We fastened the canoes bow and stern and tied
the longest painter, thirty or more feet in
length, to the tailboard of the cart, and away we
went. But before we had proceeded twenty feet the
light rope, slackened by the rapidity of the light
and low boats, caught on a stump by the water
side. The leading canoe felt the pull, and darted
headlong to the bank, and had not the boys at once
stopped the horse the canoes would have been
pulled to pieces, or dragged clean up on the
towpath.

We tried again and again, with the same result,
and then we felt ashamed of our superior knowledge
of a few hours before, and interiorly begged the
nasal
lock-keeper'spardon.

"H'ist de kunnues right out, boss,"
said one of the boys, a little fellow, exceedingly
black, with strongly marked features; "and
put 'em on de wagon."

No sooner said than done. Moseley's boat had
about one hundred pounds of water in her when we
turned her over on the bank. The little black
fellow (the other was a head taller and yellow)
had a perfect genius for management. He directed
the fastening and arrangement of the canoes; he
was almost too small to assist. He spoke such a
hasty and softened dialect that we could hardly
understand him, but he was one of the brainiest
and readiest boys I have ever met, white or black.
The conversation of the boys, as we jogged along,
was very interesting. The yellow fellow was an
indefinite character; he knew nothing certainly;
the black fellow answered "yes" or
"no," like the working of a trap.

"What bird is that singing now?"

"I t'ink dat a swamp canary, boss," says
the
yellow youngster, with a doubtful' glance at his
companion, who remains silent, till we ask him,
"Is it a canary?"

"No, dat's a wren," and you feel sure
that a wren it is.
"Whose farm is this on the left?" we
ask,looking
over a most fertile and admirable farm
several miles in extent.

"I t'ink dat farm 'longs to ole man
Douglass?" says the yellow fellow, with a
sound, as usual, like a note of interrogation at
the end of his assertion.

"Does it belong to Mr. Douglass?" we
ask the black boy.

"No, dat farm Muss Lindsey's,"
answered the firm little oracle. And the yellow
boy never resented or questioned the black boy's
knowledge, while the black boy never derided or
corrected the yellow boy's ignorance. Lindsey's
superb farm, stretching four miles
along the canal and reaching eastward nearly five
miles, is as level as a floor and wonderfully
fertile.
It was originally dismal swamp, most of it having
been reclaimed within the last thirty years by its
present owner, who is a first-rate farmer, judging
from his estate. The canal at first ran right
through the swamp, but now all the land to the
east has been cleared.
(See map, page 350.)

One of the striking features of this superb
Lindsey farm was a row of enormous barns about
three-quarters of a mile apart, and placed along
its centre. Not another building was to be seen.

Were this the time and place for such
consideration, we might dwell on the landlord
systemevidenced
by this large estate, with its many
barns, but no dwelling-houses. This is the
mistaken economical system of the South, and
particularly of Virginia. The war has not
destroyed the plantation system. The great
southern farmers of to-day stand in about the same
relation to their workmen and tenants as the
owners formerly did to their slaves, but with less
responsibility. The homes of the tenant farmers
of Virginia and North Carolina, as we saw them,
are a discredit to America. Sooner or later
Virginia will have to face the necessity of
establishing real and permanent small farm
proprietorship.

It is hardly fair to criticise the land
ownership of such a farm as this, saved from the
Dismal Swamp by the energy and intelligence of its
proprietor. If any ownership be absolutely
righteous it must surely be that of the farmer who
not only cultivates, but has reclaimed his farm
from the wilderness.

Nothing could so convincingly demonstrate the
inestimable advantage of reclaiming the Dismal
Swamp as this and other wonderful farms along
the canal, that a few years ago were wilderness,
infested with reptiles and wild beasts.

Before the light had quite gone from the
tow-path, a rabbit, and then another and another,
cameout
of the brushwood and played about quite near
to the horses' heads. With the masculine instinct
of destructiveness, a gun was loaded with evil
intent, but wise little bunny had an instinct too,
for he went out of the way of the slaughter.

But while the muzzle was regretting its lost
roar, a fat partridge hopped out of the bush about
fifty yards ahead.

The gun was raised and the little brown hen
covered, when a quiet protest was heard from the
black boy.

"'Tain't right to shoot a bird in de
mating season!"

But the remonstrance was late, the hammer fell,
the explosion followed--and the partridge, by
good luck, escaped across the canal. The
enjoyment of the black boy was as evident as the
disappointment of the yellow one. If anything
were needed to make the sportsman ashamed of
himself, it was the timid little
"cluck-clucking" of the covey in the
grass, alarmed for the welfare of the absent one.
The tameness of the birds at this season made the
offence all the meaner; and the double reproach of
the black boy's eye and the frightened little
family in the field had its
fulleffect.

Soon after, through the gathering gloom, we saw
the outline of a large house to the left of the
canal, with outbuildings and white fences, and
other large buildings on the right side of the
canal. This was Wallaceton, where, at Captain
Wallace's house, we received a most hospitable
welcome. In a few minutes the canoes were cared
for, many willing hands helping, and we were
enjoying an excellent supper. After supper it was
hard to realize, from our refined surroundings,
and the gracious hospitality we were enjoying,
that we were within the bounds of, and not very
far from the very heart of the Dismal Swamp.
Three gentlemen connected with the National
Geological Survey, Mr. Atkinson, Mr. Towson, and
Mr. Kennedy, were stopping at Captain Wallace's,
and they told us much about the swamp region, which
they were then surveying, and of which an accurate
map is soon to be published.

That night we could only see the interior of
this charming home; next morning we witnesed with
astonishment the extraordinary wealth, fertility,
beauty, and wonderful cultivation of Captain
Wallace's magnificent farm. Every acre of this
land, both east and west of the canal, has been
saved within forty years from the Dismal Swamp.
Forty years ago the elder Mr. Wallace, a man
ofhigh
intelligence and indomitable spirit, whose
immense farm joins his son's, with his own hands
cut down the first tree in the swamp, which marked
the beginning of this estate. He and his son,
Capt. John G. Wallace, have now, in the first
order of cultivation, many thousand acres of land
not inferior to the best on the continent.

We were awakened in the morning by a chorus of
bird song rivalling that of the evening before.
On looking from our window we saw a field like a
dream--1100 level acres without a fence--in which
it appeared that not one inch was left neglected
or unproductive. The splendid area of fertility
was marked in squares of varying color like a map;
here the rich dark brown of ploughed loam; there
the green ridges of early potatoes and corn;
yonder a long stretch of clover, and so on until
every foot of the fine field was filled with
natural wealth.

This field, called the Dover Farm, lies on the
west side of the canal; that is, it reaches into
the very depths of the swamp for nearly a mile and
a half. Its position is between the lake and the
canal.

How, then, if Lake Drummond and the canal be
higher than the swamp, could this 1100 acres of
land be drained? The answer has in it
thedemonstration
of the iniquity and stupidity of
the canal system. Captain Wallace ran a deep
drain around this Dover Farm, bringing the end of
it to the canal; there he stopped, and waited
until the canal was emptied some years ago, for
the purpose of being cleansed from stumps and
sand. The indefatigable farmer took advantage of
the dry water-course and dug his culvert under the
bed of the canal, bridging it securely. His drain
was then several miles long, and he continued it
until it emptied into the Northwest river, which
runs out of the swamp. Last year the lake being
swelled by heavy rains, the canal company did not,
of course, open their locks and let the water
escape; instead, they adopted a lazier, easier,
and more ruinous plan; they raised the banks of
the canal, one consequence of which was that the
confined water percolated through the surrounding
land, forced itself under Mr. Wallace's drain,
and inundated and destroyed several hundred acres
of his cleared land. Of course, from such
an injury he had no protection.

The energy and intelligence of these two
gentlemen, father and son, working with such
surroundings, are remarkable. The elder Mr.
Wallace, a man considerably over 70, spoke with
almost enthusiastic earnestness of the work he
hadhimself
done, and the greater work of general
reclamation which is possible in the Dismal Swamp.

"A railroad," he said, "instead
of the canal, would open up and enrich this whole
country. If the locks at both ends of the canal
were opened, almost the entire land of the Dismal
Swamp could be reclaimed. Or," he added,
looking at the canal, which must have cost him
many a bitter thought, "if this water were
only lowered four or five feet the land all around
here could be saved."

After an early breakfast we started up the
canal, intending to reach the Feeder early in the
fore-noon, and, if possible, arrive at the lake
about noon. Still the leaky canoe bothered us;
but while we were considering how to make her
carry her load, a handsome young farmer, Mr. R.
E. B. Stewart, courteously offered us his boat and
man to take our baggage to the Feeder lock, near
the lake. In a few minutes the boat started ahead
of us.

The canal above Wallaceton resembled the
stretch from Deep Creek to that place, the only
change being that the trees in the swamp become
thicker and taller. The majority of the trees
here appeared to be black gum, with an outer
border of poplar, maple,
andswamp-oak.

The Feeder is a deep cutting, about 18 feet in
width, running at right angles from the canal to
the lake. It is four miles in length, with a lock
about a quarter of a mile from the lake.

The current in the Feeder runs strongly from
the lake to the canal. The banks of the Feeder
are thickly covered with canebrake, the bamboos of
great height. On the right, going toward the lake
however, the swamp is more open and has large
timber.

The condition of the Feeder was a shocking
revelation. There was no raised bank here, as in
the main canal. For miles of its length the water
flowed freely over the banks into the swamp,
creating a morass of dreadful appearance. No
living thing could there find footing. Even birds
were rarely seen, although we saw a few of
beautiful plumage, one of which is known to the
negroes of the swamp as the red bird. It
resembled a flame in the brilliance of its
coloring, as it passed through the shaded light of
the swamp.

In the Feeder we met several lighters, heavily
piled with juniper logs, on their way from the
lake to the sawmill. These lighters had each two
men, colored, who poled them from the banks. At
times, when the sides of the Feeder will permit,
they walk on a line of logs laid along the
mudbank,
pushing the lighter with their poles resting
against the breast.

Our passage up the Feeder was against a strong
current. It was a steady and monotonous paddle
through dim light, the canebrake and the boughs
reaching over our heads. The air had a dense
warmth as though we. were in a closed room.
Outside on the canal, there was a strong breeze
with a decided chill in it; here, we were stifled
as if in an oven. And yet, up to this time we had
not seen a mosquito in the swamp; and as for
snakes and other wild creatures, we had almost
made up our minds that they were a tradition or a
popular romance.

"How far to the lake?" we asked a
magnificent fellow who was poling a timber skiff
down the Feeder. He was a giant in black bronze,
large-eyed, large-browed. large-motioned--a man
born to be distinct among his fellows. He stopped
his lighter by holding her against the canes, and
he looked with an ample smile at the canoes. We
had to repeat our question, when he started as if
ashamed.

"Beg yo' palidon," he said, with a
grace that became him; "I didn't hear yo',
dem boats is so putty. It's 'bout a mile to de
lake, What yo' call
demboats?"

"Canoes."

"Kunnues! nebbah heahd 'bout dem
befoah."

We remarked that he looked in good condition,
and asked him was the swamp a wholesome place.

"Yes," he said. He had worked on the
lake for seven years. He had come there from
South Carolina, sick with chills, to be cured in
the swamp.

"Do people come here to be cured?"

"Oh, yes, sah! Dismal Swamp's de
healthiest place in all de worl'. Dere's nothing
like junipa watah to cu' de chills."

"Do you like the swamp?"

"Yes, sah! I like de swamp. I wouldn't
wuk nowheres else. I could get moh wages by going
out to wuk on de high land. I get twenty dollars
a month heah; could get thirty dollars out on de
bank, but I like to wuk in de old Dismal best of
any."

This was free testimony, and we heard it
repeated scores of times by "swampers"
before we left the lake. Interesting in this
respect and others was Ned Boat, a very old
colored man, who has lived in the swamp altogether
for seventy-four years. He has never been sick.
He is now employed by Mr. Roper as a counter of
logs and marker of time, and earns forty dollars a
month. He says the swamp water will cure almost
every
disease.Another
man, the blackest man we had ever seen,
his skin being quite as black as ebony, had come
from South Carolina five years ago, with chills
and fever, had been cured by the juniper water,
and had lived in the swamp ever since. White folk
as well as black added their testimony as to the
extraordinary salubrity of the swamp. The phrase
"Going out to the high land" is the
usual expression of the "swamper" for
going to the exterior world. He speaks as if the
swamp were in a hollow, instead of being higher
than "the high land." He says, "I
came in," and again, "I went out to the
bank;" a phrase that is impressively
significant of his footing in the swamp.

We said good-by to our colored Hercules, whose
mighty arms were bare to the shoulder and his
ragged shirt open to the waist. He had on a thick
white cotton cap, without a visor, that looked
like a wadded turban. It became him mightily. In
front he had sewed a strip of red cloth, not
across, but upright, and behind he had fastened
the long bushy tail of a squirrel, that hung down
his back. "I killed dat fellow last
night," he laughingly said, seeing our eyes
fixed on the ornament.

No great tragedian on the stage ever dressed
himself so becomingly as this
blackIngomar.

There was no chance harmony here, it was nature's
own decoration. He saw himself in no mirror,
except the mirror of the canal. He knew how to
dress better than any belle in Boston or New York.
The wave of his large hand as he said
"good-by" was as kindly and as eloquent
as if he stood in a lion-skin cloak on the banks
of the Niger, a chief among his own.

We could not help thinking as we left him that
this man at least was properly placed in the
Dismal Swamp, where he was as free as were his
fathers in Africa. Like scales from our eyes
began to fall the impressions of "Dred,"
and all the other dismal stories we had read and
heard about the Dismal Swamp. Every day of our
stay on the lake this conviction grew upon us; the
slaves who escaped to the Dismal Swamp in the old
time must have lived happily in their absolute
freedom. The negro in the swamp is at home. He
has helped to spread and exaggerate the terrors of
the place to keep it more securely for himself.
If I were a slave, in slave time, and could get to
the Dismal Swamp, I should ask no pity from any
one.

But all this time we kept laboriously paddling
against the strong current, for the lock ahead,
only a quarter of a mile from the lake, was this
day letting pass an unusual volume of water.
Everystroke
of the paddle now sent us deeper and deeper
into the heart of the swamp. Suddenly, Moseley,
who was ahead, stopped paddling and peered through
the matted underbrush.

"What is it?" I asked.

"A cow and a calf! What can they be doing
here in the middle of the swamp?"

There they were, sure enough; a red and white
pair. They heard our voices, stopped chewing,
stared a moment, then turned and picked their way
into the jungle.

A few minutes later the lock came in sight, and
we saw two men waving their hats. One was the man
in Mr. Stewart's boat with our traps, and the
other was "Abeham" (not Abraham), who
was to be our guide, philosopher, and friend on
the lake. Abeham had been sent from Suffolk to
meet us by Mr. Rudolph A. King of Washington, a
gentleman deeply interested in the Dismal Swamp,
of whom I shall have more to say by and by.

"What are that cow and calf doing in the
swamp?" was our first question.

This lock at the very lip of the lake keeps the
water back to another height of several feet, so
that lock after lock, from first to last, had
backed up the lake to the height of almost
twenty-three feet above tide water.

Never can we forget the view that met our eyes
as we were raised to that last level, and looked
along the canal to the lake.

The lockhouse and the whole Feeder were
completely overhung with tall trees. So close was
their interlacing over the canal that the view to
the lake was like looking through the barrel of a
gun. The air along the dark and narrow sheet was
actually green from the light sifting through the
foliage. We were in the shadow; it was all shadow
to the end, but the end of the view glittered like
an immense diamond.

A ball of glorious and unshaded brilliancy lay
at the end of the Feeder. A "talisman's
glory" it was, set on the low water and
framed in the dense cypress.

"What is that?" we asked after a long
look of bewildered pleasure.

"Dat's de openin' to de lake," said
Abeham.

We sat there for an hour. We ate our dinner
and smoked a cigar; and the wonder lessened as the
strange glory grew. The radiance of
thediamond
became subdued till it had taken the form
of a perfect arch, with its perfect reflection in
the water.

We were looking along a dark, straight stream,
shaded over like the low arch of a bridge, until
the gun barrel simile was the most likely, and, at
the end or muzzle, the vision was carried across
three miles of open and smooth water flashing to
the sun.

Mr. Moseley photographed the scene. It was
the first time, in all probability, that this
picture, incomparable of its kind, had ever been
taken by a camera, though Tom Moore surely must
have sketched it when he stood at this same feeder
lock eighty-five years ago.

At the request of the good-natured colored boy
from Wallaceton we photographed the lockhouse,
including him. He asked, could he have the
picture, and Mr. Moseley promised to send him
one.

"Send it," he said, with the
importance of a serious child, as he named his
many initials, "to D. J. L. Griffin, care of
Abeham."

Then we started down the gun barrel toward the
lovely bridge, the perfection of which remained
unbroken to the last. Here was no effort of
landscape art, but the living hand of nature
completing its own picture and putting all art as
gently out of question as the mountain does
themole.

A weirdly beautiful view opened on us as our
canoes shot under the outer leaves of the Feeder's
bridge, and we floated at last within the
marvellous ring of the lake of the Dismal Swamp.

Vividly came to our minds the picture in
Moore's touching ballad.

Here, we thought, is the very scene, water,
wood, and sky, that the poet saw generations ago.
These trees growing out of the dark flood; this
weeping moss hanging from the sad queenliness of
the elegant cypress; these "deadly
vines" with their purple trumpet flowers that
poison the very water immto which they pour their
tears; these "beds of reed" and
"tangled juniper"; these white roots
round the border of the lake, where glide and coil
"the copper snake" and the fearful
red-bellied moccasin.

And here let the lapse of timne be forgotten
and the association be renewed. There is no age
in art. The song of a true poet is as unrelated
as the song of a bird or a brook. This is my
excuse, if it be needed, for repeating here
Moore's ballad of "The Lake of the Dismal
Swamp," written at Norfolk, in Virginia, in
1808.

"They tell of a young man who lost his
mind on the death of the girl he loved, and who,
suddenly disappearing from his friends, was
neverafterward
heard of. As he had frequently said
in his ravings that the girl was not dead, but
gone to
the Dismal Swamp, it was supposed he had
wandered into that dreadful wilderness and had
died of hunger, or had been lost in some of its
dreadful morasses."--Tradition.

"They made her a grave too cold and damp
For a soul so warm and true,
And she's gone to the Lake of the Dismal Swamp,
Where all night long, by her fire-fly lamp,
She paddles her white canoe.

Her fire-fly lamp I soon shall see,
And her paddle I soon shall hear;
Long and loving our life shall be,
And I'll hide the maid in a cypress tree
When the footstep of death is near."

Away to the Dismal Swamp he speeds,
His path was rugged and sore,
Through tangled juniper, beds of reeds,
Through many a fen where the serpent feeds,
And man never trod before.

And when on the earth he sank to sleep,
If slumber his eyelids knew,
He lay where the deadly vine doth weep
Its venomous tear and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!

And near him the she-wolf stirred the brake,
And the copper-snake breathed in his ear,
Till he stirring cried, from his dream awake,
"Oh, when shall I see the dusky lake,
And the white canoe of mydear?"

He saw the lake, and a meteor bright
Quick over its surface played--
"Welcome!" he said, "my dear one's light!"
And the dim shore echoed for many a night
The name of the death-cold maid.

Till he hollowed a boat of the birchen bark,
Which carried him off from shore;
Far, far he followed the meteor spark,
The wind was high, and the clouds were dark,
And the boat returned no more.

But oft, from the Indian hunter's camp,
This lover and maid so true
Are seen at the hour of midnight damp,
To cross the lake by a fire-fly lamp,
And paddle their white canoe.

How wonderful was the truth of the poet's
vision! A century is as a day, leaving the
picture unchanged. True in romance and reality,
Moore's poem on the "Lake of the Dismal
Swamp" is as faithful in its natural history
as in its melody.

It may be interesting here to recall the
incidents of the poet's visit to the lake in 1803.
To one man in Norfolk is due special thanks for
the constant attention which of late years has
been given to this memorable visit. Mr. M.
Glennan, editor of the Norfolk Virginian, has
often agitated the reclaiming of the Dismal Swamp,
making use ofMoore's
ballad to keep the popular interest from
flagging. Mr. Glennan writes me the following
interesting account of Moore's two visits to
Norfolk:--

"In 1803, Tom Moore received the
appointment as registrar of the admiralty court at
Bermuda; and in September, 1803, he sailed from
Portsmouth, Eng., in a ship of war that was taking
out Mr. Merry, minister to the United States.
The ship arrived in Norfolk Nov. 7 following, and
while Mr. Merry went to Washington, Moore
remained in this city, the guest of Col.
Hamilton, then the British consul, who resided at
that time in the building now the residence of Mr.
Copps, on Main Street, opposite Fenchurch. During
his stay here Moore made many friends and
delighted the young ladies of the borough by his
skill upon the harpsichord. While in Norfolk he
wrote the famous ballad 'The Lake of the Dismal
Swamp.' In December he started for his destination
in Bermuda, on the man-of-war Driver.
He was
disappointed in his anticipations as to the
Bermudas, and after he had been there about three
weeks he wrote to his parents that 'he was coming
home.' He accordingly appointed a deputy, and in
the spring he took advantage of the sailing of the
frigate Boston, to come to New York,
wherehe
shortly arrived. He remained in New York but a
short time, when he again made up his mind to
visit Norfolk, arriving here with Capt. Douglass.
During his second stay in Norfolk, it is believed
that Moore was the guest of Mr. William Plume,
who resided where the Hospital of St. Vincent de
Paul now stands. Mr. Plume was a native of
Ireland, whose real name was Moran. He had taken
a very active part in the rebellion of 1798 in
Ireland against the English rule, and with
Commodore Barry, 'the father of the American
navy,' and other kindred spirits, had to flee the
land. He settled in Williamsburg, Va., but
afterward removed to Norfolk, married a Miss
Elizabeth Hazzard of Princess Anne county, Va.
For some reason, presumed to be the fear of
persecution by the English government, he never
revealed that he was the Irish rebel Moran until
the time of his death. He was greatly respected
and the soul of society, whose house was always
open. His descendants of today are the Morans,
Barrys, and Kings of the city of Norfolk."

When Moore visited the Lake of the Dismal
Swamp, no doubt with the purpose of putting into
ballad form the legend he had discovered in
Norfolk, he naturally went alone in the
"dugout" of a negro boatman, so that he
might not bedisturbed.
He passed up the
canal, came through the Feeder and entered the
lake, just as we did, beneath the living arch of
cypress. "He wrote all the time he was in my
boat," says the man who brought him to the
lake. This negro boatman, called "Uncle
Tony," was a well-known character. From his
own lips the story of the poet's visit has been
written down by Mr. Robert Arnold of Suffolk, Va.
Here is Uncle Tony's story:--

"I shall never
forgit dat time. One mornin' I
war gittin' my skiff reddy to go to de lake, a
mighty nice-lookin' man cum up to me an' sed: 'Ar
you de man dat will carry me to de Lake ob de
Dismal Swamp for which I will pay you 1 pound
sterling?' De
gentman talked so putty dat I tole him to git in
my skiff an' I wood carry him to de lake. I
notice dat he kep writin' all de way. When I got
to de horse camps (a large encampment of negro
wood-cutters), I stopped to git somefin' to eat.
He cum outen de skiff an' ax me what I stop for.
I tole him I stop to eat some meat an' bread. He
ax me if I would have a drink. I tuk off my hat
an tole him dat I would be much obleeged to him
for it. He fotched a silber jug, wid a silber cup
for a stopper, an' sed: 'My man, dis is Irish
whiskey, brung it all
it all de way from home.' He tole me
dat his name was Thomas Moore, and dat
hecum
fom 'way ober yonder, an' was gwine to de lake
to write 'bout a spirit dat is seed dar paddlin' a
kunnue. De har 'gin tu rise on my hed, an' I ax
him ef dat wus a fac'. He sed dat he wus tole so
in Norfolk. I shal nebber forgit dat gentman. I
fotch him back, an' he gin me de poun' which war
five dollars, an' he lef' for Norfolk, bein' mitey
glad dat I had carried him to de lake. He tole me
dat he had trabbled an' seen sites, but dat he
nebber wus so 'stonish befo'; he did not 'spec' to
see at de end ob de kunel sich a putty place, an'
dat I wood hear some time what he was gwine tu say
'bout it."

Our camp lay on the northwest corner of the
lake, three miles from the Feeder's mouth. At the
start we struck out to the middle of the lake
before turning north, so that we took in at first
glance the whole wonderful, view. For myself, I
longed to lay down my paddle and sit there
motionless until the sun sank and the moon rose,
for a dream and fascination that had drawn me from
childhood was now fulfilled and completed. Only
the lake of my fancy was much smaller and gloomier
than the true lake. There is no other sheet of
water like this anywhere. No other so far removed
from the turbulence of life, so defamed, while so
beautiful.
Itfills
one with pity and
wonder--the utter silence and loneliness of it.
It is a dead sea, but neither bitter nor barren.

I could not help the feeling, that increased as
time passed, that this pure eye of water, ringed
by one distinct line of dark trees, no farther
horizon visible, was not on a plain, but on a high
mountain. Later on, as we sailed around the
borders of the lake, another delusive thought
persisted in coming. It always seemed that the
wooded shore rose abruptly thirty yards or so back
from the water, and that I verily could see the
uplifting of the trees and underbrush. Probably
because it was unnatural that the shore should be
just as low or lower than the water surface, the
senses refused to accept it as true.

The first deep impression made on me by the
lake was its size. I had expected to see a sheet
not a tenth part as large, and gloomy with the
shadows of its tall, overhanging trees. Instead,
from the centre the trees were a low, dark border
on the far horizon.

From the centre, the lake is the very ideal of
loneliness and stillness, strangely emphasized by
the solitary wide-winged hawk, tipping on his high
circle. No smaller bird can be seen at this
distance in the trees on the shore--though birds
are there, and in
richvariety.

Here, for instance, are some of the birds we
noted in a few days, many of them in great
numbers: the catbird, robin, swamp canary, wren,
sparrow, mocking-bird, whip-poor-will, red bird (a
blaze of plumage), thrush (with a crown),
yellow-hammer, woodpecker, owl (immense fellows),
hawk, eagle, kingfisher, jay, heron, quail, wild
turkey, woodcock, buzzard, crow, and numerous
brilliant little birds of many species, whose
names we did not know. In the winter the lake is
fairly covered with geese, swans, and all kinds of
duck. The bat, which I believe is not a bird, is
at home here.

But crossing the lake that first day we saw
only one bird, a hawk of great size. The water of
the lake was deliciously cool in the centre, where
the average depth is about fifteen feet. Again
and again we drank the sweet draught. Looking
into it, no mirror could be more perfect in
reflection. The flash of the paddles was brown,
not crystal. On a day when the water broke (and
we crossed the lake one day before the rush of a
gale), the brown brandy-light through the lifting
waves and the warm ruddiness of the breakers were
singularly beautiful.

The lake is full of fish of many and excellent
kinds, though it has never been fished in
thedeeper
water. The "swampers," who live
on the borders, never fish beyond the line of
stumps, which are at farthest a hundred yards from
the shore, so that the fish of the lake are not at
all completely known. The garfish, because he
jumps, has been seen sometimes eight feet long,
but no other fish is seen in the deep water. You
cannot see one inch into the lake; it is like
looking into a bowl of ink. This makes it
dangerous for light boating, for the snags are
numerous, and though they may not be a nail's
breadth under water, they are quite invisible.

The fish in the lake, great quantities of which
we caught, and on which, indeed, we chiefly lived,
are the speckled perch or "Frenchman," a
delicious fish, the raccoon perch, chub (a black
bass), yellow perch (small), flyer, garfish,
catfish (very numerous), gaper, blackfish (thirty
inches long), roach and eel. There are plenty of
pike in the canals.

The following story has been told me about the
strange disappearance of a fish from the lake:
"There was a very numerous fish known there
as the brown perch, which was esteemed as the
finest of all fresh-water fish. One year, about
1866 or 1867, they disappeared and never have been
caught since. It was the year of the great swamp
fire, which lasted through a continuous drought of
morethan
two months. It is supposed that the strong
alkali imparted to the water from the timber and
other vegetable ashes destroyed this fish, for
soon after the rainy season had set in, immense
quantities were found floating dead on the edges
and surface of the lake." In the town of
Suffolk, on the northwest border of the Dismal
Swamp, Mr. Rudolph A. King of Washington has a
large property, which has led him to consider the
advantages of the swamp region as a game preserve.
He has started a project of getting five thousand
men to form a game club, paying about ten dollars
each a year, and lease the whole Dismal Swamp. He
writes to me as follows:--

"It is within the
reach of men of moderate means, by combination in
sufficient number, at trifling expenditure, so
small as scarcely to be felt, to secure ownership,
maintain and extend to a magnitude never attempted
on this continent, with large enough area and
attractions for thousands, 'The Pioneer Shooting
Park, Game Preserve, and Health Resort of
America,' exclusively for business men, to provide
shooting, fishing, and outdoor recreative
attractions similar to the English and European
style, for those seeking health or pleasure in
pursuit of game or fish, canoeing,
yachting,or
kindred diversions, such as are becoming more
necessary every year. By these means we could
attain more practical results in protection of
forest game, fish, and other natural luxuries of
this country, for the benefit of those concerned,
than legislation has been able to reach."

One has only to listen to Mr. King to be
converted to his project, which is certainly one
of the straws in the wind that have a significance
for the future of this region.

The lake itself was discovered in 1775, by a
Scotchman named Drummond, after whom it was named.
He had followed a deer so far into the swamp,
which was then regarded as impassable, that he
lost his way. He wandered through the dreadful
aimless avenues of the morass for three days and
nights, afraid to lie down and sleep on account of
the serpents and panthers. He had almost
abandoned hope on the third day, and, the story
goes, was meditating self-destruction to escape
the horrors of a lingering death in the swamp,
when he parted the canebrake before him and found
himself on the verge of the wonderful lake. He
had discovered the jewel hidden in the heart of
the swamp! The poor fellow thought at first he
was crazy; that this was the wild vision of
delirium, till he had waded into the dark
waterand
drank of it. Then, hope and strength
returned. He took his bearings by the sun and
succeeded in reaching his home that night, with
the almost inconceivable tidings of a great lake
in the centre of the Dismal Swamp.

George Washington, in 1763, in his twenty-first
year, made a complete survey of the Dismal Swamp,
with profound results. Throughout his life the
secrets of nature he had there discovered were
never forgotten; and years afterward, when the
Revolutionary War was over, and he was "the
father of his country," he purchased the
swamp, and organized the Dismal Swamp Land
Company, which still exists and continues its
ownership.

Washington's original design was not the mere
cutting of timber, but the entire reclamation of
the swamp. He had perceived the immediate
possibility of bringing almost its entire area
into cultivation. His great project failed in
this its first purpose; not because it was
impracticable, but because the company found that
the timber-cutting alone yielded an unexpected and
almost incredible revenue. The reclamation of the
land was gradually given up, and as it was found
that by holding and raising the water the timber
could be more easily taken out, the locks began
their work of still further drowning the whole
district. Then came
thecommercial
canal, with power over all the water in
the swamp, and devoid of intelligence and public
spirit, and the land of the Dismal Swamp was
doomed.

Washington himself surveyed the swamp for the
route of his canals. His first cutting, running
from the northwest corner of the lake in a
westerly direction, ended at what is called the
Reed Farm, on the Edenton road, seven miles from
Suffolk. It is still called "Washington's
Ditch." It has for many years been abandoned
as a means of travel, a more direct route--the
Jericho Canal--having been made at a later date.
The Jericho Canal leaves the lake at the same lock
as "Washington's Ditch," and ends within
two miles of Suffolk, running into the Nansemond
river.

I paddled up both these canals from the lake,
and more oppressive surroundings it is hard to
conceive. The Jericho Canal is ten miles long and
eighteen feet wide, but the encroaching bamboo
jungle reduces this width by over two feet on each
side. The dense canes rise at least fifteen feet
high on both banks, so that it is like canoeing in
an unroofed sewer. To enliven the passage, the
moccasins, on sunny days, climb to the tops of the
bamboo canes, and are seen constantly dropping
into the water. It is a common thing to have
themdrop
into the open dugout of the
"swamper," out of which they wriggle
without delay. But the thought of a five-foot
venomous snake dropping into a fourteen-foot
canoe, with decks forward and aft, under which he
would he sure to dart, and out of which there was
no escape except by returning to the centre of the
boat, was a dismal imagining. To make sure of no
such visitor, I kept firing now and then into the
canes ahead.

The water in the Jericho Canal runs into the
lake; but at one-third its length the stream turns
and runs the other way, emptying into the
Nansemond river.

This line where the watershed divides is
unquestionably the highest portion of the swamp.
It has not been surveyed; but calculating the rise
from the Feeder to the northwest corner of the
lake to be two feet, and three feet for the old
lock at the opening of the Jericho Canal, I
predict that the extreme height of the swamp will
be from twenty-eight to thirty feet above tide
water.

The condition of the wholly abandoned
"Washington's Ditch" is even more
forbidding than that of the Jericho Canal. The
heavy trees are crowding its banks and leaning
into it; the bamboos meet across it for long
distances. It is, I think, the most sombre and
evil-looking waterway on
theearth,
and yet no foot of it but is beautiful.
The water moves slowly toward the lake (any
movement is a relief in the gloom and silence, for
even the birds have deserted the place), but after
a
short distance, as in the Jericho Canal, the flow
changes and goes outward.

Washington had undoubtedly discovered the
deepest secret of the Dismal Swamp, and
appreciated its importance. He had read, most
probably, the only description of the swamp in
existence in his time, in a manuscript journal
kept by Col. William Byrd of Westover (on the
borders of the swamp), a man of great
intelligence, who had surveyed the Dismal Swamp in
1725, at the request of the Governor of Virginia.
Col. Byrd's manuscript is to be seen in the
National Library at Washington. After his survey,
he reported to the Governor of Virginia that the
Dismal Swamp could be drained and reclaimed, and a
petition was sent to George III.; asking that a
company be formed for that purpose, the company
agreeing in advance to bear all the expenses, to
pay themselves by the ownership of the reclaimed
land, which was to remain untaxed for fifty years;
and they bound themselves also to complete the
work in ten years.

One hundred and sixty-seven years have passed
since then. King George's answer has not
yetbeen
received in Virginia, and the Dismal Swamp
remains undrained and abandoned. Surely this is
one of the most remarkable facts of modern times.

Colonel Byrd, in his journal, describes the
dreadful dangers of his exploring expedition into
the Dismal Swamp. "We hoped to gain immortal
reputation," he says, "by being the
first of mankind that ventured through the Dismal
Swamp." He started on his exploring
expedition in March. He could not have selected a
more unfavorable month, for the swamp was then
drowned with the winter rain almost as completely
as it is in the same month in our own times. The
lake is five feet lower in September than in
March. No wonder that after a week's attempt he
had only succeeded in entering to a distance of
three miles. His party could find no solid ground
to rest on at night, and their fires went out on
the soggy earth.

Colonel Byrd says he succeeded at length in
reaching the North Carolina side of the swamp, and
of course he is to be believed. But he must have
skirted the eastern border all the way, for he
missed the lake, which was not discovered until
another quarter of a century had passed. Colonel
Byrd based his favorable report to the governor,
no doubt, on the fact, apparent then as now, that
the swamp lay between three
tidalrivers, the
Elizabeth, the Nansemond, and Pasquotank, and was
high above them.

It needed no wizard to see that such a swamp
could be drained.

Washington, in 1763, in his own words, entered
the Dismal Swamp, and "encompassed the
whole." He camped on the east side of the
lake, and unquestionably considered the problem of
its formation, for he was astonished, and he
astonished others by declaring that all the rivers
in the swamp flowed out of it instead of into it.

"The Dismal Swamp," wrote Washington,
"is neither a hollow nor a plain, but a
hillside." He had discovered, what
measurement has since shown, that the lake was 23
feet higher than the sea!

Scientists have accounted for the water in the
Dismal Swamp, from cursory observations, by the
rainfall, even denying the existence of springs in
the lake. I venture, with much hesitation, to
disagree with this conclusion, believing it to be
impossible that the rainfall can account for the
enormous supply of water, not only contained
within the swamp, but which is, and always has
been, flowing out of it.

First, it is granted that no more rain falls on
the Dismal Swamp than on any other piece
ofVirginia
40x30 miles square. Second, it is
certain that it does not draw from the surrounding
country, for it is higher than all its
environment.

Yet, out of the Dismal Swamp run no less than
nine rivers, some of them very considerable, and
still the lake continues to overflow, and the
whole vast extent of the swamp remains inundated.

These are the rivers that, if traced to their
source, will be found to take their rise in the
Dismal Swamp: the south branch of the Elizabeth,
the west branch of the Elizabeth, south branch of
the Nansemond, the Deep Creek, the North River,
the Northwest River, the Little River, the
Perquimans, and the Pasquotank.

Granting that the dense foliage of the Dismal
Swamp lessens evaporation, there is still nothing
like a proportion between the rainfall and the
water that remains in and flows out of this
district.

There is no field in America more deserving of
scientific investigation than the Dismal Swamp.
"The first thing" is not known about
it--how it was formed. Fortunately the attention
of the National Geological Survey has now been
turned in this direction. A survey of the entire
district has been ordered and begun. Within a
year, it is hoped, a perfect map of the Dismal
Swamp,showing
its surface, with the
accuracy of five-feet contours, will be published.

"The bed of the lake was formed by a fire
that burned the trees and the peaty earth, making
a hollow where the water lodged," says
"general opinion."

But then it must have been a swamp before the
fire, or there would have been no peaty earth to
burn, and the rivers must have been flowing out of
it as they do to-day. The fire could not make the
rivers, even if it did make the lake; and if it
were originally a swamp, the fire could not burn
deep enough to form the present bed of the lake,
which is from 7 to 15 feet in depth. The fires
still yearly occurring never burn below two feet,
for at that depth is the percolating water, and it
must have been there always.

The bottom of the lake is composed almost
wholly of fine white sand, and the temperature
varies greatly in parts. In our long rubber boots
we waded in the shallow water near the shore in
several places, and found this fine sand bottom.
Prof. N. B. Webster, in an interesting article on
certain physical features of the swamp, says,--

"The vast swamp appears to be retained above
the level of the adjacent land in a way similar to
the peat mosses of Solway and Sligo, until
theyburst
and overwhelmed the neighboring country.
What known force but that combination of molecular
force known as capillarity can supply and sustain
the waters of the lake and swamp above
described?"

It is hard to answer as to the supply, hut it
is obvious that the force that sustains the lake
at its present height is not molecular, unless a
lock be a molecule. "The outlets at the
canal locks," said old Mr. Wallace,
"are inadequate to let out the overflow, and
it has to flood the land." He was speaking of
the pane-like openings in the locks to lower the
water.

But suppose the locks were opened altogether,
and left open, what would be the result?

The middle level of the Dismal Swamp Canal is,
or is supposed to be, eight feet deep. If the
middle locks were opened, the lake would be
lowered eight feet, and the whole swamp west of
the lake would drain into it, while that portion
to the east would drain into the canal. If there
be a doubt of the consequence, look at some of the
wonderful farm lands lying east of the canal from
Deep Creek to South Mills. Miles and miles of
fertility almost incomparable on the surface of
the earth. Half a century ago every foot of this
land was Dismal Swamp, forsaken morass, full of
reptiles and
wildanimals.

"There is some peaty land in the
swamp," said Mr. Wallace, "and I don't
know that it could be reduced to cultivation; but
there are hundreds of miles of land as good as
this I have reclaimed."

"Would the land burn if it were drained,
as some people say?" I asked Captain
Wallace, whose reclaimed land runs within a few
miles of the lake.

"No," he answered, smiling at the
question; "Why doesn't our Dover Farm (which
lies west of the canal) burn if that be true? The
whole surface of the swamp becomes dry enough to
burn in the summer months; but it does not burn;
at least it burns no more than any other closely
timbered country."

Another objection offered is that the drainage
of the swamp would produce malaria.

Shame on the pretence! The people who are
responsible for the swamp have not been able to
make it malarial in a hundred years of treatment
inductive to malaria. They have drowned it, and
rotted it, and cut away its purifying juniper
wood, and still it remains the healthiest portion
of the State of Virginia, if not of the United
States.

If I were sick to-morrow of malaria contracted
on some New England river, I should go at once to
the Dismal Swamp to be cured. Depend on
it,the
tree that can kill malaria in such a morass
can drive it out of the human blood.

What reason is there to believe that malaria
would follow if a remedial and sanative, rather
than a destructive and mephitic course were
adopted?

But who are "they" who thus have the
doing or undoing of the swamp in their hands?

"They" are the people who devised the
policy of the Dismal Swamp Canal and the Land
Company or Timber Company, and all who support
their past and present management.
"They," too, are the farmers of the
swamp district who do not agitate for the removal
of the obstructions to their prosperity offered by
those persons or corporations. "They,"
too, are the whole people of Virginia and North
Carolina who tolerate in their States an evil that
the early eighteenth century resolved to remove,
and that is a double discredit to the nineteenth
century.

The Dismal Swamp Canal was chartered in 1787 as
a public highway, to be forever free from taxes on
condition that it served certain important
purposes, one of which was that "as the said
canals, the main canal and feeder, may be of great
utility in affording the means of draining the
sunken lands through which they pass. . .
itshall
be lawful for the proprietors of the said
adjacent lands to open cross-ditches into the said
canals." I copy from the charter.

This condition has been outrageously abused by
the corporation. Instead of keeping the canal as
a means of draining the adjacent lands, the banks
have been raised to store the water till the canal
is much higher than the lands adjoining. If a
farmer on the west side wants to drain his land,
he must adopt the heroic course of Captain Wallace
and tunnel under the canal.

On this vital condition, which accounts largely
for the immense sums of public money voted for the
canal in Congress and the State Legislatures of
Virginia and North Carolina, the Canal Company has
long ago forfeited its charter. Instead of using
the public money for the good of the farmers
owning the swamp lands, it has used it to destroy
those lands, with the view, probably, of
eventually buying them at its own price.

But they have overshot the mark, and have
ruined their own property more hopelessly than
they have injured the land. They have allowed
another canal to be run almost parallel to theirs
(the Chesapeake & Albemarle), which has
diverted all their trade, and which bears large
vessels and steamers. The new canal has a much
longercourse,
with other disadvantages; but it has
beaten its old and pampered rival out of the
field. Only one little steamer plies on the
Dismal Swamp Canal, and even this must disappear
as soon as a necessary railroad is run through the
eastern swamp region.

But let us return to our canoes and recall some
of the pictures of the lake and swamp.

"Abeham," said Moseley, on our first
afternoon at the lake, "put some bait in my
boat; I am going to fish till supper time."

And he goes one way from the camp in his canoe
with his rod and his gun, while I go another out
on the lake. The camp is a rude frame house, with
a few bed places or "bunks" in it, built
on the edge of the lake by Captain Busby of
Suffolk, probably to induce sportsmen and
fishermen to visit the place. Instead of pitching
our tent in a snake country, this safe and dry
shelter is most gratefully accepted. Contrary to
our expectations, the nights were quite cold, and
I had reason to be thankful that I had brought
with me a large raw silk blanket (one of those
made by George S. Brown of Boston, whose excellent
goods ought to be known to all who are fond of
athletics and outing).

Our camping ground had associations, too,
thatare
worth mentioning. Over thirty years ago
(in 1855), an attempt was made by some
enterprising men of Suffolk to open the beauties
of the lake to the outer world. It was a worthy
project, but it began at the wrong end; the
beginning ought to have opened the eyes of the
outer world to the beauties of the lake. Colonel
Hollidway and others of Suffolk built a large
hotel here in the swamp, near where our camp
stood. "There were accommodations for one
hundred and fifty persons," we read in a
Suffolk man's letter, "and a band of music
was kept continuously playing." Is this a
true story? we ask ourselves, standing on the
very site, where not a vestige of hotel remains.
To whom did the band play continuously? If people
wanted to hear a band why did they come here for
it? What business had a band here, anyway? How
did the guests reach the lake? Through the
Jericho Canal in a lighter, under the
snake-fruited bamboo? What a most singular vein
of questions we open, thinking of this vanished
hotel with its incomprehensible band,
"playing continuously!"

"Where did
this hotel stand?" we ask Abeham.

"Out
dere in de lake, at dat black stump. Dat part of
hotel. Dat's all dere's lef'. Lake cover'd it
all up."

The stump was two hundred yards out
in thelake.
This bears out the words of Mr. R. A. King
that "the lake has widened on the west side,
by washing of the waves, over two hundred yards
since 1857."

We left Abeham to cook a supper of fish which
he had caught while waiting for us in the Feeder.
Your southern darky is a natural fisherman. Like
a thrifty housewife who takes out her knitting
between-whiles, he will bait a hook and fish while
he is "doin' nuffin'." And what a
picture of contentment he is while fishing! Look
at Abeham, here, just waiting while we have gone
up a "gum road,"--for we tried
faithfully to explore all the avenues, wet and
dry, leading into the swamp, on our way round the
lake.

The southern negro is the freest man in
civilization, as he ought to be, for Heaven knows
he has had enough of bondage. He is striking the
balance now. He works just when he chooses, and
he loafs when he chooses. He is not only
politically, but socially, free. He has no
ambitions, no pretensions, and hardly any
responsibilities. He is the sugary element in the
grinding sand of our civilization. Lazy? Why
shouldn't he be lazy if it seems best to him?
Suppose he begins to dig and scrape and grow
thrifty and hard and mean as progress and Society
make us? Suppose he learns to sell
withlight
weights, and lend at usury, to live above
his income, not because he wants to, but because
Mrs. Cuffee in the next shanty gave a party, and
Mrs. Abeham across the way has set up a mule
carriage, and his wife and family must do as much
as they? Will he be a happier or a better man by
this way of living than he is now with his old hat
and his cheery smile and his pleasant manners and
his little niggers singing and laughing with their
mother in the humble but sufficient cabin?

Not he; he is choosing the wiser and happier
way. Let him go fishing while he may. He has a
right to a holiday for at least two whole
generations. If the white folks grumble at their
work left undone, let them go and do it
themselves. They made him do it long enough.
Now, let him work just when he likes, or not at
all, if he likes.

Keep on, Abeham, just as you are. Have a rest.
Your clothes are good enough, and you can hunt for
food any time. Civilization will catch you and
tame you and dress you and educate you, and make
you a provident, careworn, dependent, miserable,
compromising, respectable element of society soon
enough.

But was that a signal Moseley made to me? Yes,
a nervous, quick wave of the hand that says,
"Come here! Come here
atonce!"

I join him in a dozen strokes of the paddle.
He is excited.

"Quiet, now," he says, being most
unquiet; "do you see that tall gum tree on
the very edge of the water a quarter of a mile
away?"

"Yes."

"An eagle, a bald-headed eagle, do you
hear? has just lighted in the top of that tree.
We must have him. We will get as near as we can
and start him up. If I miss him, you make sure of
him."

We proceeded quietly toward the tree. Abeham,
watching us, and scenting sport, had joined us.
When within a hundred yards of the tree we saw the
great bird standing on a high bough, a tall,
gaunt, black body, with white head and tail. The
intervening branches made it a risky shot, but
when we had got fairly within range Moseley fired,
and down came the bird head-first, as if plunging
into the lake.

There was a fallen tree growing beneath, and he
was caught in its branches about ten feet from the
water. He hung heavily, his great curved yellow
beak on his breast, his eyes closed, and his
enormous talons extended helplessly. He seemed to
be quite dead.

"Get him down, Abeham,"
saidMoseley.

Abeham pushed his boat under the branches and
stood up, reaching his hand toward the bird. Next
moment he shrank back in open-mouthed terror, with
his eyes fixed on the eagle, and actually fell
into the seat at the end of his punt.

What a change had come over the wounded
creature! The dying king had arisen in his
harness. He had rallied for a last stroke as his
enemies closed upon him. The head that was
drooping a moment ago was raised with infinite
pride and defiance, and the neck stiffened with
wrath. The eyes glared with piercing anger at the
foe that dared to touch him; the massive yellow
legs were drawn up to strike, and the talons
opened and shut with ferocious passion.

This was the dread vision that had terrified
Abeham, and no wonder. The bird at that moment
could have torn him limb from limb.

But it was only a flash, only the agonized
effort of despair and death. Next moment a gray
film spread over the fierce eye, the yellow beak
dropped on the breast, and the legs reached
downward pitifully and found no footing. Then,
once more making us start in our boats, he rallied
with raised head, gave a wild look around, and
with a desperate struggle raised himself from the
branches, and dashed toward the low bank twenty
feet away.He
alighted on the ground, and stood there with
his head lowered and pushed into a dark angle of
the bank, with his back to his enemies. There
could hardly be a doubt that it was a deliberate
preparation for death, not an effort to escape.
He had seen his enemies close beside him, and he
knew he was in full sight. A proud savage, badly
wounded, in the power of merciless foes, would
have done precisely what this eagle did.

Next moment another gun flamed, and he fell
backward, dead. He was a noble specimen of
the bald-headed eagle--the national bird. This is
the strong-winged one that, Audubon says,
"can ascend until it disappears from view
without any apparent motion of the wings or tail,
and from the greatest height descends with a
rapidity which cannot be followed by the
eye."

"The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls."

Who said that the bald eagle was a coward?
Audubon, I am sorry to see, believes the
aspersion. Benjamin Franklin regretted that the
bird was taken as the national emblem, because it
was said to be mean, ungenerous, pusillanimous;
that hewould
not fight a dunghill cock in the same cage.
No, perhaps he cannot fight in a cage; such a bird
as this was not built to fight in a cage. But
whoever thinks the bald eagle a coward had better
see one die. At the last moment of life, at
least, no nation need ever seek for mightier
dignity or courage than his. Woe be to that power
that ever meets the look of a nation preparing for
the death-grip as we beheld that of this majestic
bird.

He was awfully solemn and stern, even as he lay
dead in the canoe. I never saw a head, human or
animal, with such tremendous lines. The long,
curved bone of the skull over the deep-set eye
gave an expression of profound suffering and
power. In one view he seemed to be very old and
gray, and reminded one of the loneliness and
kingliness of Lear; but the general suggestion,
not of the beak, but of the side brow and sunken
eye, was of the head of Daniel Webster.

We hung him on a stump till morning, till we
could send him by canal to Suffolk to have his
skin preserved. He was, as all great birds and
beasts are said to be, covered with foul
parasites, that must have made his life a torment,
and that probably deepened the patient and
enduring lines of his head. These vile things
hurried from the dead king they had feasted on
while his blood waswarm;
and in the morning, when we took his body
away, we saw them clinging hopefully to the
sun-warmed stump. "Long live the king!"
one fancies their sycophantic word, as they kissed
the senseless edges of the heated bark. For three
whole days some of them hung to the place, through
dew and rain, till a drenching night washed them
into perdition.

So it is always when a great man dies. He must
have his parasites in life, and it is a cold world
for the vermin when he is gone.

What more about the swamp? Snakes? I wish I
could close without saying a word defamatory of
the poor, maltreated swamp. But one thing is
true: it is no more to be blamed for its vermin
than the eagle. In fair hands the swamp would
purify itself and be as wholesome in its life as
in its air and water.

"Pity 'tis, 'tis true." We have told
of the birds and flowers and other lovely features
of this strange region. Now we must go down into
the recesses of its sins and let them see the day.

Booted to the thigh, armed with knife and gun,
is the only safe way to enter the canebrake, or,
indeed, to depart in any way from the open spaces
of the swamp. During our exploring we did not see
bear or panther or wildcat; but whoever
leavesthe
beaten ways of the swamp must be prepared to
meet these inhabitants.

For three days, with a cool wind and nightly
rain, with the exception of one large king-snake
which we killed on a "gum road," we had
seen nothing more noxious than a blue lizard with
a red head, a harmless and friendly little fellow
who seems to have no fear of man, for he will go
on eating his invisible food and glancing up in
your face in a most amusing and taking way. But
the shape of the creature is against it, and the
color of his head, which is exactly the hue of the
moccasin's belly. When Moseley woke up from a
doze one wet afternoon, and found one of these
lizards (the negroes call them scorpions) on his
pillow, still eating invisible food and smacking
his lips with a friendly glance, it was well the
reptile didn't understand American, or he might
have been offended.

Our first snake was killed in this way: On our
second day, while passing up a "gum
road," we came upon a large dark-skinned
snake lazily coiled on a sunny log. Having killed
him by striking him with a heavy cane, we were
afterward told by Abeham that it was a harmless
king-snake, and that, moreover, it spent its time
destroying the poisonous snakes in the swamp,
which it does by
crushingthem.

On the morning of the fourth day--and what a
day that was, with a copper cover on it, and a
crater underneath--sweltering, we woke up, and
both had the same thought--a swim.
"Jim," a very interesting colored
"boy" from a neighboring
"swampers'" camp, was outside, and he
stared aghast at our preparations.

"No, no, don't do dat!" he said
earnestly.

"Why not?"

"Moccasins!" with a grave head-shake.

We did not jump in; we contented ourselves with
a bath in the boat. But we laughed at
"Jim," and sat down to breakfast in the
open air. In a few minutes we stopped laughing.

"What is that swimming out there?"
asked Moseley, pointing to a slight dark streak
about twenty yards out in the lake.

"A moccasin!" cried Abeham, getting
on his feet excitedly. Abeham was used to snakes,
but terribly afraid of them. "Shoot
him!"

We shot him; slight and short as he looked
swimming, he was four feet seven inches in length.
In a minute another--his mate probably--swam past
and was killed, and was exactly the same length.

The moccasin swims with its head and about
fourteen inches of its back over the water.
Thehead
is very small for the thickness and length of
the snake. It swims rapidly with a wavy motion.
It is dark on the back, with a violently red
belly, like inflamed scales, from the loose skin
of the under jaw to the tail. Most of those we
saw (and after that day we ceased to count them)
were of an average length of about four and a half
to five feet, thick as a man's arm, and
repulsively fat. The prevailing suggestion of the
creatures when you kill them is fatness.

All the snakes of the Dismal Swamp are shy and
timid. Very rarely do they bite, and then only
when driven by fear. The largest snake in the
swamp is the king-snake, which grows to be ten
feet in length. The rattle-snake is fortunately
rare in the swamp. It is mostly seen near the
Feeder, and is the diamond or water rattle-snake,
the largest and most sullenly ferocious of its
dread family. It has a brown back, and a dirty
yellowish belly. A "swamper" said he
had seen one this year that was eight feet long.

The most dangerous snake in the swamp is one of
the smallest, called the poplar snake. He is
about twelve inches in length, green in color,
like that of the poplar tree in which he lives.
We escaped him most fortunately, for before we
heard of him we had deflowered many poplars of
theirbeautiful
blossoms. This snake is a direful pest;
from his size and color he is not easily seen; and
his poison is said to resemble the rattle-snake's.

The water moccasin is a venomous snake, and it
is surprising, considering his countless presence
in the swamp, that so few people are bitten. This
reptile literally infests all quarters of the
swamp. Other snakes, more or less numerous, are
the black snake (sometimes nine feet long), the
horned snake, and the jointed snake. Abeham and
Jim said that they had often killed this latter
questionable reptile, and that it had "broken
into pieces about two and a half inches
long."

In case of snake bites the unvarying practice
of the "swampers,, is to bind the limb above
the wound tightly, twisting a stick in the
ligature, then suck the wound thoroughly, and
afterward drink copiously of whiskey. They say
that this treatment invariably cures all bites in
the swamp, excepting the rattler's. But we only
met three or four persons who had known of actual
snake bites.

One quality of the moccasin is interesting and
worthy of record, his curiosity. These snakes
escape rapidly on the approach of a man, but will
often return to the place they left to take a look
at him. We had a singular instance of this
inquisitiveness. One day, on our way round
thelake,
we came to a deserted "gum road,"
from which the workers had departed years ago.
Mr. Moseley remained at the landing to take a
photograph, and I went slowly up the "gum
road," hoping to shoot some squirrels. About
a hundred yards up the road I came to the rotten
old log hut of the "swampers," and there
on a heap of bare ashes that still remained in the
midst of the grass, lay in loose coils a long,
dark snake, which I thought, from his similarity
of color to that we had killed some days before,
was a king-snake. I resolved to let the
benevolent creature go free. He raised his head
and looked at me, perhaps for a second, and then,
with an easy and graceful slowness, glided into
the canebrake. I passed up the road, and was
joined by Mr. Moseley and Abeham. On our return
I was telling them of the snake, and when we came
to the place, all speaking loudly and laughing, I
said: "That heap is where the snake
lay," and, behold, there he was again, in the
same place. He was not ten feet from where we
stood. He had concealed his long body behind some
leaves and earth, and had placed his head
cunningly, as he thought, on the top of the ash
heap, where it very closely resembled a dark
creeper leaf.. He was evidently prepared for a
good look at the intruders. He made no
motionas
we stood looking at him and talking about him,
but stared at us unwinkingly. We were amused at
his audacity, and went on calling each other's
attention to his method of concealment, and his
evident purpose of observation, all the while
thinking it was a king-snake. At last Abeham went
to stir him up, to see how long he was, when the
snake slowly lifted its head, and again Abeham
retired in dismay, crying out: "It's a
moccasin! Shoot him!" We killed him, and
found him to be an unusually large moccasin, not
quite five feet long, but very thick and heavy.
Strange as it may appear, the chief drawbacks of
the Dismal Swamp are not its serpents, or bears,
or other formidable wild creatures, but its flies,
most pestilent of which are the yellow fly, before
which for six weeks in July and August even the
colored "swampers" are forced to abandon
the "gum roads." The yellow fly raises a
burning blister with every bite; and, helped by
the "red-horse mosquito," gnats and
gallinippers, they can, it is said, kill a mule.

The largest wild animal (except cattle) found
in the Dismal Swamp is the black bear. Captain
Wallace killed thirty on his farm last winter (by
spring guns set around his cornfields), one of
which weighed 850 pounds; and "Jim"
thefriendly
"swamper" said he had counted
twenty-seven bears crossing a "gum road"
one morning on their way to a field on the Suffolk
side of the
swamp. There are also hog bear (from the size),
Seneca bear (white breast), panther, wildcat
(numerous and large, about three times the size
of the ordinary cat), deer (quite numerous, and
some with noble antlers), coon, opossum, rabbit,
fox, squirrel, otter, weasel, and muskrat.

One word more about the snakes. One
night--(the early summer nights are cool in the swamp)
we had an immense fire outside the hut, the logs,
five or six feet long, standing on end and sending
up a roaring flame. Several "swampers,"
who had come to sit at our fire and chat, began
fishing for catfish, which are attracted by a
light. They were pulling them in briskly, and one
pulled in a large eel, over two feet in length and
very thick. They instantly beheaded him and
pulled his skin off, leaving the flayed body to
wriggle about in the dust. It was horribly like a
snake, and we had to tell Abeham to throw it into
the water. The
circle had drawn closer to the kindly flame, when
one said, pointing to a dark, round object about
three yards from the fire: "Is that another
eel?"

Every eye was fastened on it, and no one spoke,
but Abeham quietly went for a gun, and
withouta
word shot the intruder. It was a moccasin that
had come out of the canebrake and coiled himself
to enjoy the fire.

One day Moseley was out on the lake fishing,
and I was paddling quietly under the trees on the
bank, hoping to shoot a red-bird or a crowned
thrush for specimens. I heard Moseley hail me,
and answered, but then he went on in a very.
queer way talking with some one in the swamp
beyond me. At last I went out to him and found
that he had discovered an echo of wonderful
clearness, and which was otherwise interesting.
Near the shore I had not heard it, but a quarter
of a mile out it was startlingly distinct.

The sound was quite unlike the hard resonance
thrown back from cliff, mountain, or cave. It
smacked of the swamp in a manner hard to describe.
The repetition was largely magnified, though it
seemed to be thrown to a distance, and to come
from a great height, as if it had bounded up from
the wide field of the swamp. The sound had an
elastic click about it, like the remote stroke of
a woodman's axe. It was the echo from a wood,
unmistakably, and not from a wall.

Strange to say, the best word to throw to an
echo is its own name. It loves to fling it back
unclipped and sudden. Divide the
syllables,stopping
at the "ech," and it seems to
wait impatiently for the "o." We had a
long conversation with it, and wondered whether it
resided in the dense canebrake and higher foliage
that lined the water front, or rebounded upward
like a boy's ball that had fallen on the vast
concavity of the tree tops.

Abeham said he had never heard of the echo
before, and he listened with all his ears,
laughing consumedly when the echo shouted
defiance; but he would not try it, from shyness as
we thought.

We spent the days exploring lake and swamp,
returning to camp tired at night, but repaid by
our experience. We were seeing the lake and swamp
as no one can ever see them without such boats as
ours. A heavy boat, with oars, cannot pass
through the ditches and canals, nor even coast the
lake inside the line of stumps. The negro
"dugout" is available for lake and
canal, but it is heavy and slow, and it cannot
face the lake in rough water and high wind. The
birch-bark canoe would get snagged at every
length. The only safe and pleasant boat for the
swamp is the cedar canoe, and an open one is
better than a decked one, to let the moccasins
wriggle out if they happen to fall in while you
are passing through the narrow canals.

During our passage round the lake we came
tovery
many old and new "gum roads"
running into the swamp. We followed these until
we saw the nature of each. Some had been deserted
apparently scores of years ago, and it was a sorry
sight to see the effect of the ruthless
timber-cutting which is going on to-day as it was
50 or 100 years ago. No intelligent forestry has
ever been applied to the swamp; the selection of
the trees has been wholly left to ignorant men.
Where whole groves of juniper or cypress were cut
down, the cleared land was left to grow up in
jungle, and the jungle that follows this cutting
is an impenetrable canebrake, through which an
elephant could not force his way for a mile.
During these wanderings Mr. Moseley never lost
an opportunity of capturing a characteristic
sketch or photograph, and his pictures faithfully
preserve many of the striking features of the
swamp.

The beauty and profusion of the vegetation seen
from these "gum roads" is indescribable.
The greens of the underwood are the intensest hues
of nature; the ferns dripping with moisture, the
yellow jessamine climbing the great trees, the
familiar Virginia creeper rioting in its leaps and
lovely hangings. Again and again, not knowing, we
were tempted to gather the attractive trumpets of
the poisonous oakvine, that is so virulent
thatto
bathe in water in which it hangs will blister
and corrupt the flesh. This is Moore's
"deadly vine," that

"doth weep
Its venomous tear, and nightly steep
The flesh with blistering dew!"

"There are two things I should like to
know," said Moseley, during our last day on
the lake, "and one is what that fellow in the
Norfolk tug meant by advising us to keep our
pistols handy? Surely there could be no men more
good-natured and lawful than these poor fellows
who work in the swamp."

This was emphatically true. Considering the
wild life the "swampers" lead, they are
the most harmless, amiable, and, I should say,
innocent men I have ever met. Their conversation
with us and among themselves was about as light,
cheerful, and curious as that of children. They
carry no weapons; they are sober, play-loving, and
obliging. Only on one colored man in the swamp
did we see anything like a weapon, and that was a
razor, ostentatiously carried in his waistcoat
pocket by a jaunty mulatto; but he had been a
great traveller, he said, and he had only come
into the swamp to see some friend among the
juniper-cutters, though perhaps he had some other
reason for
alittle
retirement from society. The swamp is a
fine place for a retreat.

"What is the other thing you are in doubt
about?" I asked Moseley.

"The wild cattle. We have seen only that
red and white cow and calf, though they say they
are numerous. I can't believe that that
tame-looking cow was wild."

"But what business would a tame cow have
in the depths of the swamp, and how could she get
home if she had a home to go to?"

He admitted that it was hard to find a domestic
reason for the cow being in the swamp, but still
he doubted. We were passing at the time through a
narrow and dark waterway, where the sheets of deep
water under the trees lay like black glass. We
came to a dry bank in the morass, and, standing
there, quietly and proudly looking at us as we
approached, was a red bull about three years old.
We stopped paddling and returned the stare. He
stood beside our only passage, a narrow one.
Abeham was behind, and he shouted, "Look out,
dere; dat wild bull dang'ous!"

We shouted at him, but he paid no heed. He was
a superb creature, dark red all over, round-headed
and very small. We broke branches and waved them
and shouted, at a distance from
himof
about twenty yards. Not an eye winked, but his
tail gave one or two quiet waves from side to
side. Abeham wanted us to load a rifle, and kill
him; but this would be wanton, as we were to leave
the swamp the next day. Still we must pass, and
he would not move. He paid no attention to a gun
pointed at him. The poor fellow was only half
wild, one could not help thinking; the hereditary
taint of human association was in his blood.
Probably his grandfather had fed in a fenced
field, and had submitted to be "driven
home" by a bare-footed boy.

At last a shot fired into the canebrake close
to him gave him a shock. He looked at the canes
where the small shot rushed, and then turned and
trotted into the swamp.

That night we decided to leave the lake next
day, passing through the Feeder and keeping along
the main canal until we reached the Pasquotank
river in North Carolina.

It rained in torrents in the early part of the
night, and then cleared up, and the full moon
shone on the lake. It was a scene of marvellous
beauty, which color alone, not words, could
reproduce. The lake was smooth, and incredibly
black, the water retaining absolutely no light,
and only appearing to be liquid by surface
shining.
Themoon's
reflection, on the contrary, was whiter
than it would be on common water, and it crossed
the lake like the avenue to a king's palace. It
was five o'clock in the morning, and the eastern
sky was paling the moon, when we stood on the edge
of the lake, with "A health to thee, Tom
Moore!" and then we broke camp.

As our canoes shot out on the lake and we
looked back on the camp, we knew that the days and
nights spent there could never be forgotten.

We crossed the lake in the teeth of a stiff
breeze that made the beautiful brown waves leap at
us in play, as if to stay our going. It was still
early morning when we reached the mouth of the
Feeder, and took our last look at the lake, in
memory of which Moseley carried the scene off in
his camera.

This last look at the lake, between the trees,
showed us a tall cypress with immense roots
standing up in the deep water, like a suffering
mythological tree, condemned and metamorphosed for
offending the gods. Then we set our faces toward
the outer world, or toward "the bank,"
as our friends "the swampers" would say,
and a lovely passage we had, running with the
swift current through the shadowy Feeder. We
stopped only twice on our way, once to capture a
terrapin that was sunning himself
ona
log, and again to fire at a snake in the reeds,
a shot which was admirably captured with an
instantaneous photograph. Reaching the canal, we
turned southward toward North Carolina, and at two
o'clock reached a station on the canal where there
was a store kept by a little man who was as
consequential and disobliging as it only lies in
the power of a rural magnate to be. Though we had
breakfasted early and not very well, we had to
proceed hungry on our way.

The locks we came to now lowered us step by
step, until at last, having passed South Mills,
the largest village on the canal, we were dropped
into the tide-water of the Pasquotank river.

After a long and winding way between densely
wooded banks, the lonely river gradually widening
into a large sheet, we ran after nightfall under a
railroad bridge, and saw the lights of a town, or,
rather, one solitary lantern set on a wharf, and
knew we had reached Elizabeth City, N. C.

We could only see that the main street was
shaded with noble elm trees, as we went to the
Albemarle Hotel; and it is pleasant to record here
that we had a supper and breakfast in this
little-heard-of place that would have done credit
to Delmonico's for material, cooking,
andservice.

Next morning we had a look at the city, and a
sad one. This was a noted seat of culture,
wealth, and fashion before the war, the dread
marks of which were still plainly seen on every
hand. The main street, that was a pride to the
State thirty years ago, was burned by the
Confederates themselves to save it from the
"invaders." Large squares of house lots
are vacant still, grass-grown, and ruin-covered,
with here and there a poor, shaky-looking store
cheek by jowl with a board shanty filled with
negro children.

In walking through this city one could not help
moralizing on the awful affliction that befalls a
defeated country. Here are the men, middle-aged
and still young, who remember the proud and
gracious old times, and who are doomed forever to
contrast them with the sordid and compromising
efforts of hopelessly broken fortunes. Over all
the country round about Elizabeth City the fierce
waves of war had rolled, leaving a fearful mark.
We saw noble houses, once filled with beauty and
luxury, now crowded with colored working people;
gardens in which the roses, reverting to
single-petalled wildness, struggled for sunlight
under burdened clothes-lines.

But we saw one house to remember with pleasure,
with a rose garden in front of it like a
picturefrom
sensuous Pompeii; and then we came away,
thinking that Elizabeth City might, indeed, once
more awake to proud and prosperous days. But,
said the thought, it will take more than a
generation for the revival, and the people of the
old glory shall not be those of the new. The
wealth that was based on slavery was a bubble, and
the pride that went with it was a poison for the
very earth. God's hand is heavy when the scales
come to be balanced. Expiation and atonement are
always bitter, however they may be sweetened by
the spirit of renunciation. We intended to return
to Norfolk by the Chesapeake & Albemarle Canal,
the flourishing water-way, crowded with ships,
which ought to be only a young rival of the Dismal
Swamp Canal, for the latter had all the natural
advantages, and also controlled the field.

But the Chesapeake & Albemarle Company had an
inferior route, plus intelligence, and the
consequence is that it is crowded with commerce,
while the Dismal Swamp Canal is traversed by one
poor little steamer, the Thomas
Newton, that looks like the working model
of Fulton's first steamship.

There was a storm raging along the coast, and
we could not face bad weather outside in our
canoes to get to the other canal, so we shipped
oureffects
on the Thomas Newton to return on our
tracks along the whole course of the Dismal Swamp
Canal.

The Dismal Swamp could be drained and
reclaimed, and a property of very large value
would be added to the States of Virginia and North
Carolina. While in process of reclamation, and
perhaps afterward, the present canals could be
retained to get out the timber, which is
enormously valuable; but the locks making the
central or higher level could be abolished. This
would lower the canal and the lake about seven
feet. It would be comparatively inexpensive to
dredge this level down to the outer levels.

A fall of seven feet in the lake would reduce
it perhaps half a mile, leaving all round it a
beach of white sand of exquisite fineness. This
would at once purify it from the water snakes that
make its banks hideous.

The surrounding swamp would drain into the
lake, the Feeder and the canals, leaving their
banks dry. A road could easily be made on one
side, and a clearing on the other, along all these
canals, sweeping away moccasins and other water
reptiles.

The reduction of the water could be made
profitable to the owners in another way. The city
of Norfolk needs a water supply, and here is
thebest
water in the country at its very door.
If the color of the water be objectionable it
could be passed through a filter and made crystal,
though it is possible that in the change it might
lose its anti-malarial quality.

A narrow-gauge railroad ought to be run from
Portsmouth to South Mills. (Since writing this
the programme of the Portsmouth & South Mills.
railroad has been sent to me, and the promoters
have paid me the compliment of inserting as a
preface part of my report of the Dismal Swamp.
This railroad will complete the ruin of the canal
as a commercial way, and will leave it valueless
except as a drain.)

And now I have told the story of the Dismal
Swamp as two men saw it who had no other interest
than that of chance voyagers through the
wilderness. I have tried to convey to others
exactly the impressions left on my mind, often
using restraint in order not to overstate the good
or evil qualities of the Dismal Swamp.